


Fade To Black

by dmux86



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Character Study, Core Four in their 30's, F/M, Not Beta Read, Of a character I no longer root for or relate to, Post-Canon, mentions of all the canon ships and their various choices in S4/S5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:00:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29821140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dmux86/pseuds/dmux86
Summary: There are two truths that now fundamentally define the life of Forsythe Pendleton (Jughead) Jones the 3rd:He has always and will always love Betty Cooper, wanting her in every way a man can want a woman.And he wishes that Betty and Archie had ended up together.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Fade To Black

"Really, the only difference between a happy ending or an unhappy... or at least ambiguous one... is when the story ends. I think that's actually more true for romance than any other genre" Jughead explains from his seat on the stage, glancing out at the audience as he explains "Even the greatest love stories, the ones where they never even noticed someone else, never experienced time apart, or any of that... they still end in someone crying at a funeral if you keep the story going long enough. Ending with a wedding is not just a cliché but probably the biggest falsehood in both literature and on-screen story telling"

The panel continues past then but he's made his point, getting plenty of applause at the end before signing a few copies of the three books he's published and finally making his back up to his hotel room, booked till noon the next day. October 1st, the day before his 32nd birthday. Not a particularly significant birthday but still cause for reflection as he rides the elevator up, thinking about the two truths that now fundamentally define the life of Forsythe Pendleton (Jughead) Jones the 3rd:

> He has always and will always love Betty Cooper, wanting her in every way a man can want a woman.
> 
> And he wishes that Betty and Archie had ended up together.

That second thought had been bubbling under the surface for years, only fully crystallizing after it was too late. After the #Bughead wedding that, if their lives were a movie or some shitty TV drama, would have been the final scene, the fade to black happy ending. When he had taken her someplace warm and relaxing for a honeymoon, paid for by his second book that cleared his debts completely... and he woke up in their king sized bed to find her texting the redhead while still naked from the night before. Just to tell him about the flight and the weather of course. 

He doesn't ask to look at her phone, or have a fight about it. Perhaps he should have.

It would have been easier, he thinks as he steps into the luxurious suite his publisher paid for, to have lived with seeing his two oldest friends fall in love and get married at 26 instead of him and Betty doing so. To have savored the fact that he was right, to have been able to hold onto his self-righteous anger about all the lies and betrayals. To have been seen as the bigger man if (when, if he's really being honest, since deep down he's only wanted her to be happy) he chose to accept them and given their love his blessing.

Instead he has to deal with the day to day reality of being with Betty while never truly knowing if he can trust her around their oldest mutual friend, who is still inexplicably the 'boy next door' for them even after both couples go married.

They were just friends of course. Friends who considered sex as part of their friendship to be perfectly normal. Somehow everyone else seemed to think that was better than them actually dating or being in love or whatever, even Veronica dismissing it as a 'casual fling since we weren't available' when he asked her about it one time. Only he was single, even living in the same house as Archie at the time, simply too busy working multiple jobs to notice their affair for awhile.

He knows Betty loves him. When they found the so-called Trash Bag Killer and the maniac pulled a gun on them, Betty shoved him aside and took the bullet. He spent the next week in the hospital sitting at her bedside, and when she asked him to forgive her and try again right there from her bed with an IV in her arm of course he said yes.

But he still had his doubts then and still has them now. She's lied to him, either directly or by omission, so many times about Archie. And he's still not sure about the timeline around her and Archie ending their 'affair' and Veronica latching onto the redhead during her divorce. 

He doesn't want kids, is what he tells her, pointing out the various issues in their (already overlapping) family trees and gets her to agree... of course not mentioning that if they had a kid who didn't have his dark hair or cold blue-grey eyes he would spend the rest of that child's life wondering things a father should never think about.

He goes on book tours as often as he can. Partially for the money... a man who spent significant portions of his life in a trailer park or technically homeless can always claim he's doing it to earn more money, saving up for their future. That doesn't explain why he so often takes a different flight home than the one scheduled, sometimes showing up early, sometimes as much as a day late. Just to see how she reacts, the same way he tested Archie early in sophomore year by picking a fight with Reggie. 

His flight isn't scheduled till noon, to get him home in time for dinner, but after a quick room service dinner he starts packing up anyway, all but the essentials for the morning. Trying not to think about how she hasn't texted him since he was eating breakfast. 

His phone finally does buzz with a notification... a selfie posted to social media by Veronica. She's in NYC apparently, out with Katy Keene and Josie McCoy tonight, and no mention of Archie on their #GirlsNightOut

Jughead looks at the picture, the dark haired woman smiling, her two young children safely at home with her husband. A charming and loveable man who can't cook, but has a childhood friend right next door to help out with the kids and in the kitchen. 

Thinking back to how Veronica didn't bother telling him what she found out at prom, he changes his flight from the afternoon to a red-eye and gets a ride to the airport without telling anyone, his BMW still parked in the long-term parking at the airport so he can show up before sunrise.

He's still not sure if he wants to be proven right or if he wants to be proven wrong, but he's never been able to leave well enough alone. 

**Author's Note:**

> We all know they'll end up back with who the fans want them to be with
> 
> But I don't buy Jughead actually being happy
> 
> So threw this togeter


End file.
